Colourful characters II
Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to their respective owners.
"Well, now what?" Ryan asked some time later, after the sounds of the battle had vanished away in the distance. "Helen, do you have any ideas?"
"Not now, I'm trying to figure out what they're saying," Helen muttered crossly in reply, and indeed, the two teens were trying to say something, albeit in a language that Ryan has never heard before, and he wasn't sure that Helen had, either.
"It's all Greek to me," Ryan confessed to his... well, whatever Helen was to him.
"Same here," Helen agreed, "it's just that... it's not the same Greek I was used to. I understand at best one word in five or so, and that's being generous, actually."
"Okay," Ryan nodded widely, deciding to skip Helen's linguistic revelations. "Well, what do you understand?"
"Phrixus... Hella... Athamant... Ino... Beothia," Helen listed what she had learned, before changing the topic abruptly: "Incidentally, look around: is anybody stalking us?"
"Um," Ryan snuck a peak and looked around their hideout. "So far seems to be so good. That is not to say that there may be a team of ninjas or samurais or whoever stalking us, but so far so good."
There was a pause, as Helen just glared at Ryan. "Fine," she finally said, clearly keeping her temper in check because of witnesses. "What do you suggest that we do with them?"
"Get them out of here?" Ryan suggested simply. "I doubt that they were liked too much around here, judging from the conditions we found them in."
"Point," Helen admitted reluctantly. "But think that they're up to it?"
Ryan and Helen looked at the two frightened teenagers.
"Probably not," Ryan admitted, "but we still got to try, don't we?"
Ryan and Helen looked at the two frightened teenagers once more and then at each other. "I'll assemble the crossbow," Helen muttered.
"Yes, that's a good idea," Ryan agreed. "We could use a crossbow."
Helen glared.
/
Getting back to the time anomaly proved to be relatively easy and uneventful. The surviving warriors – if any – had fled, and the carnivore had pursued them, leaving the time anomaly behind as well.
That is not to say that the time anomaly was unattended: another pair of dinosaurs – completely different dinosaurs from the tiger-striped predator – were browsing among the olive grove instead.
"What are they?" Ryan asked Helen.
"Dinosaurs. Plant-eating dinosaurs," Helen replied matter-of-factly as the two giants – the bigger one being easily 4 meters tall while standing on all fours – browsed. "You're talking to the wrong Cutter, you know? I'm anthropologist, not a palaeontologist."
"Point," Ryan admitted. "But we cannot just leave them here, can we?"
"All right," Helen gave in surprisingly quickly. "What do you suggest?"
"Well," Ryan muttered thoughtfully, not fully realizing that even as they spoke, Helen manoeuvred him and the teenagers ever closer to the time anomaly, away from the dinosaurs. "I still have your crossbow."
"Yes?" Helen responded, sounding rather wary for once. "What of it?"
"Well, I'm thinking of firing a warning shot, see?" Ryan nodded and fired one, just over the smaller herbivore.
The smaller dinosaur (it still vastly towered over Ryan and others) was not amused, but bellowed to its parent or partner for assistant. The bigger herbivore was not amused either, as it stopped browsing and bellowed at Ryan even louder, before charging straight at him.
"Run!" Helen yelled, using pretty much the same tone of voice that Abby used on Connor several days ago (and centuries in the future), and Ryan, seeing how several tons of bad-tempered dinosaur were about to trample him, did just that.
To be more precise, Ryan fled following Helen and the teenagers through the time anomaly, the bigger dinosaur followed him, and the smaller dinosaur followed the bigger one...just as the time anomaly snapped shut, trapping the four humans in the Middle Cretaceous Antarctica. (For the two dinosaurs, this was home, so they did not count.)
"Okay, that was unexpected," Ryan confessed to Helen, as he, her and their new charges stood, catching their breath (the plant-eating dinosaurs have forgotten all about them as soon as they were back in Antarctica).
Helen threw a rock at him.
"Ouch!"
End